Jesuit Church, Molsheim, Baroque church in Molsheim, France.
The former Jesuit Church, now the parish church of the Holy Trinity and Saint George, is a Gothic Survival (Nachgotik) building of pale pinkish-beige stone under a steep dark grey slate roof. It is 72 m long outside, with a 45 m spire and a small stair turret with a pyramidal cap on the roof. The interior nave is 20 m high, with side tribunes above the aisles.
Archduke Leopold V of Austria, Bishop of Strasbourg, decided on 15 November 1614 to fund a new church for Molsheim's Jesuit college, founded in 1580. The first stone was laid in February 1615 and Christoph Wamser built it in two years; it was consecrated on 26 August 1618. When the Jesuits were suppressed, it became the parish church of Saint-Georges in 1791, replacing the demolished old parish church.
The church was dedicated to the Holy Trinity from the start, and only in 1791, after the old parish church of Saint-Georges was demolished, did it take the name Sainte-Trinité-et-Saint-Georges. Its north transept holds the Baroque Saint Ignatius' Chapel (1621–1630), the south transept the Rococo Our Lady's Chapel (1748).
The church stands in Molsheim but not in the very centre of the old town, so allow a short walk from the market square. Eight original Renaissance doors with large iron fittings still serve the exterior, the sacristy, the Saint-Michel tower and the stair turrets to the galleries. The tower top, 45 m up, is reached by a 159-step spiral staircase.
The 1781 pipe organ is by Johann Andreas Silbermann, from the family of Alsatian organ builders. Also easy to miss is the Late Gothic cross, 4.5 m high and 2.5 m wide, brought here from Molsheim's former Carthusian monastery.
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